TIRUNELVELI: Thoothukudi crime branch police have arrested two persons on charges of stealing `1.60 lakh from the bank account of a school headmaster using a fake card that was created by stealing the personal information from the card using a skimming device.
Police also confiscated a skimming device, fake debit cards, scanner, camera, two cars and four mobiles from the accused, identified as S Kishore and V Jenober, of K K Nagar in Trichy. They were arrested in Thoothukudi.
Addressing newspersons, district Superintendent of Police P Mahendran said that the offenders had tampered an ATM kiosk located at Vannarapettai in Tirunelveli by installing the skimmer device and stole the electronic data stored in the cards. “After obtaining the particulars of the card, the duo will make fake debit cards and have withdrawn the cash from the victim’s bank account. Further investigation is on,” Mahendran said.
He also added that the offenders had confessed that they had attempted similar kind of theft in districts including Tirunelveli, Thiruvarur and Virudhunagar. Mahendran also appreciated the crime branch Inspector Shahul, Sub-Inspector Vijaya Anitha and others.
What is skimming?
ATM skimming is a fraudulent technique to obtain the debit or credit card particulars by strategically installing skimmers, spy cameras or any other PIN-capturing devices inside the kiosk. While the skimming device are often installed over the factory-installed card reader by the skimmers to steal the card particulars, spy cameras which are concealed inside things such as brochure holder are also used for these crimes.